Typical walk-behind lawn mowers and riding mowers utilize an engine or other power supply to rotate one or more mower blades. The mower blades are typically formed by stamping a thick metal sheet in order to form an elongated metal blade. These thick, heavy blades rotate at high speeds, which requires significant torque to maintain such high rotational speeds of the blade(s). As a result, large engines—typically in the form of a combustion engine—are attached to a mower deck or a mower frame, and these large engines are needed to produce the high torque requirements for rotating the heavy blades. The combination of the running engine and rotation of the cutting blade within the mowing deck is often quite loud, requiring hearing protection during operation of the mowers. A need therefore exists for a lawn mower cutting blade system that requires less torque and/or energy to rotate the cutting blade system.